Austin Scott: 5.5 Years Old

Austin Scott, our darling boy. In the past 6 months, not only have you gotten smarter, stronger, funnier, and kinder - but you've gotten an even bigger piece of my heart than ever before. 

Stats: 5T clothes. The biggest brother-heart around. 

Things to remember about Austin at this age: 

He's such a good brother. To Lydia, to Caleb, and to Lucy. He loves each of them and he plays a different role for each sibling.

-We went on a field trip to the Aquarium. My very favorite part of the day was when he put his arm around Caleb (who has been having nightmare about Alligators for months) and told him about how the Alligator is nice and wouldn't hurt him. 

-He loves candy and games. He got to go on a special Daddy date to the arcade and he talked about it for weeks and weeks afterwards. 

-He's been extra interested and helpful with our basement. He likes building and construction in general, so even though he can't do so much - he's really enjoyed getting to be a part of it. Also, we've been letting the kids play with all the scrap wood from the framing (plus some glue) and he's been in heaven. 

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-He loves playing games. He goes through phases of which game is his favorite, but whichever game it is he wants to play over and over and over. David says that Austin gets this from him. Some of Austin's favorites right now are: Sleeping Queens, and Cover Your Assets. 

-We still love watching the train go by. One day there was a Big Ben train which was really good because it was HUGE. But I love this picture because it's a good illustration of my boys watching the trains go by out the back window. 

Austin is our early riser. He's the first one up almost every single morning. He will snuggle in bed for a minute, but then he's ready to be awake and going for the day. I've started trying to set out some toys for him to play with in the homeschool room so that he can keep himself occupied while the rest of us wake up for the day. (It only sometimes works, most of the time he's ready to go downstairs for breakfast. #earlyriser)

He LOVES cooking. He's actually really good at it. He follows instructions well and you can tell that cooking just makes sense in his brain. He's particularly good at pancakes, but he helps me with almost everything that I make in the kitchen - almost every day. 

Austin saw these cheese puffs on October 23rd, 2019. He wanted them SOOO bad. He decided to start saving his money for them. Slowly but surely he worked to save his money and on March 7th, 2020 he bought them. He was SO excited. It took him a long time because he was still wanting to buy other things in between, but he never forgot, just kept saving bit by bit. I've been so proud of him because he's been great to share with anyone and everyone and it makes me so happy. 

Austin started the 19-20 school year  in the fall as a preschooler who was going to a spanish class on Monday, a neighborhood preschool on Tuesday and Thursday, AND a speech class on Wednesday. He started out great, but you could quickly tell that it was just too much for him. We dropped the Spanish class, and then in November we dropped the Preschool class, too. He was so much happier at home doing learning time with me and I'm glad to be able to facilitate that for him. When he was going to preschool, his very very favorite thing was riding his bike to and from his class. 

He has the best sense of humor and such a great laugh. The things that he thinks are funny make me laugh, too. His face in this picture of my mom reading his favorite Dragon books to him just make me smile.  

-Halloween was the best because Austin loves candy. If you ask him what his favorite thing is, he will say "Candy". If you ask him what his favorite thing to do is, he will say "Eat Candy." He made a great dragon for our Knight-Dragon-Princess theme. 

He's such a sweet mamas-boy and I love him so much. Sometimes he asks to print out a picture of the two of us together so that he can hold it when he goes to sleep at night. I love that about him. 

He sure loves his Dad, too. If we are being honest. David is the real favorite about here and any time that Austin gets to spend with David is THE BEST ever. Case in point: Mom makes him eat his dinner. Dad takes him to a Jazz game and lets him eat ice cream. (This was such a fun date that David had been planning for month and months. The kids 

One of the sweetest moments with David and Austin was one morning when David helped him get some cereal and then just sat and listened to him for a really long time. Austin was telling him all about the complex plot line of one of his favorite episodes of Wild Kratts and David was just interested and engaged and it made me love both of these boys even more.  

Grandma and Grandpa Walkers house is always a favorite: Building things with Grandpa-Great, jumping off the bunkbed, and making kid-pancakes with Grandpa Walker. 

SNOW: 

Austin - Christmas 2019. He LOVED everything about it. The lights, the presents, the traditions, the CANDY. He's a sweet boy with a generous heart and I loved celebrating this Christmas season with him. 

He had been asking for a drone for Christmas and his face when he opened his present won the award for best reaction of the entire year. He was SO excited! 

-In the past six months, we've been spending almost every Tuesday at Cal and Sue's house visiting with Sue while Cal is at the temple. I'm grateful for the time that he has been able to spend with his Grandma. He loves her. (Also, he asks for fruit snacks every time we go - almost immediately upon arrival. I try to help him learn to wait until they are offered to him, but he loves them so much it's hard to balance manners with excitement.) 

-He likes to build and create. His mind is a STEM mind and he says that he wants to be a machine maker when he grows up. He often asks me for complex machine parts and sometimes gets impatient when I can't help him build a working helicopter (or other such idea) with a real engine out of plastic recyclables. 

-When my brother Jacob was young, we called him Spike, because no matter what my mom did, his hair would stick straight up. Austin has inherited Jacob's hair. If it's short, it sticks up, if it's long, it sticks up even more. I keep thinking that if it just would grow out a little bit, it would be easier to lay down - but it's not true. It just sticks straight up. We don't mind and we usually let it just be, but we gave him a haircut and he seems to like his hair a little shorter. 

He's such a big helper to me. It's not uncommon for him to help me unload all of the groceries from the car. One day after a shopping trip, I was upstairs putting Lucy down for a nap before putting the groceries away and I came down to see that Austin (with Caleb's assistance) had put every single grocery away. I was so impressed and grateful for this special, sweet boy. 

He also helps me vacuum all of the time. I think that he likes our new Kirby Vacuum as much as I do. In fact, I absolutely know that he was even more excited than I was when we bought it. It's a cute thing for him to appreciate and help with so much. 

He is very particular about the things that he likes. And when he likes something, he really likes it. One of those things is the chicken on his Upstart program. It's a reading/phonics program, but if you play it long enough it lets you get into a science module, and one of those science modules is watching a chicken grow from an egg. It treats it as real-time, so every day you can check-in and measure how much your chicken has grown. He tells everyone about his chicken, and I have to explain that it's a computer program, ha.
We were at the fabric store picking some fabric for a Christmas present for Uncle Bruce when Austin found this airplane fabric. He talked about it non-stop and we finally convinced Grandma Peaden to get it for him for Christmas (we'd already bought his presents and she was still looking for one). She was hesitant to just give him a swatch of fabric - but he LOVED it! It was his second favorite gift, next to the drone. 

He's been working with a speech therapist in one-on-one classes this year instead of a group talking time class and he's done SO incredibly well. I was worried about switching him out of the group class because everyone said that's typically the most effective, but for him this has been such a great fit. We love his teacher, Mrs. Crandall and on the day that she asked him to say the Ch sound and he was just able to do it - I cried tears right in her office. He works so hard and almost never gets impatient with me when I try to help him. (Only sometimes does he responsibly say "Mom, sometimes it's hard for me to say what I want when you keep interrupting me about my sounds." And then I try to be better at finding a balance between helping him in conversational speech and just listening to him share what's on his mind.  

On that note, some of the things that I have written down to remember about things he's said include:

-In a prayer at dinner, "Please bless that I will like the soup next time."
-Always during his prayers he says "Thank you for mommy, thank you for daddy" and it melts my heart every time.
-Whenver he needs some extra energy or strength for a task, he says "I need Dada-power!" and goes to David to "charge him up" and then he has the power needed for his objective.
-"I need a mama snuggle."
-He says "probably" a lot, it's cute. 

January and February were big months for him. He took a kickball/soccer class and then a gymnastics class. They were his first classes of the kind and I think that he liked them.

He's so athletic and often creates little obstacle courses for himself. This day he started at the top of the stairs, slid down the railing - ran down the lower half of the stairs, jumped onto a box and slid off of it to end. As I watched him, I felt like I was seeing a little David at this exact same age. I love it. 

Just a few weeks ago, a flu virus called Coronavirus that has been sweeping through the world hit the USA and things started shutting down. Schools, churchs, businesses- everything has closed down and we are being encouraged to stay home in self-isolation/quarantine. Even though we homeschool, it's been a big adjustment for everyone. Austin has been a champ through it all, and if we have to be stuck in a quarantine - I'm glad he's here with me.

These pictures show so many changes that have happened in the past six months. The first picture is at church in September for the Primary Program. The second was taken this last Sunday when Austin gave a talk at our church-at-home. He's bigger, smarter, braver, and he's facing a world-wide pandemic with a good attitude. 

Austin, we love you!